CDC goes all out to combat Ebola

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CRISIS: A Nigerian port health official uses a thermometer on a worker at the airport in Lagos, Nigeria, yesterday.

People walk past the Connaught Hospital in Freetown that is used for treatment of Ebola virus victims in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014. The World Health Organization has begun an emergency meeting on the Ebola crisis, and said at least 932 deaths in four African countries are blamed on the virus, with many hundreds more being treated in quarantine conditions. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)

A man and woman taking part in a Ebola prevention campaign holds a placard with an Ebola prevention information message in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization has begun an emergency meeting on the Ebola crisis, and said at least 932 deaths in four African countries are blamed on the virus, with many hundreds more being treated in quarantine conditions.

A street trader in Freetown sells plastic hand washing buckets, as demand for basic sanitation products has boomed during the Ebola crisis with a simple bucket and tap selling for around ten dollars in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014. The World Health Organization has begun an emergency meeting on the Ebola crisis, and said at least 932 deaths in four African countries are blamed on the virus, with many hundreds more being treated in quarantine conditions. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set its emergency operations center in Atlanta at its highest response level over the Ebola crisis, dispatching dozens of experts to the stricken region in West Africa, while the World Health Organization discusses whether it should declare the crisis an international public health emergency.

CDC spokeswoman Karen Hunter said the movement of the center’s emergency operations center to Level 1 activation is “reserved for the largest-scale responses, which often require substantial agencywide effort.” The CDC said within a month 50 specialists will be in West Africa, where U.S. teams are already operating in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

WHO is expected to announce its decision on an emergency declaration tomorrow after two days of closed-door meetings. International health emergencies have been issued twice: once during the N1H1 flu outbreak in 2009, and for polio in May.

Authorities confirmed yesterday that a Nigerian nurse who treated the first Ebola-related death in the country died. The five most recent Ebola cases are in Nigeria’s capital of Lagos, which has a population of 21 million, raising fears it could spread more rapidly and farther. The death toll in West Africa has reached 932, with more than 1,700 reported cases.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared a state of emergency, saying some civil rights may have to be suspended. Observers say the crisis there — with 282 dead — has deepened because many people are keeping ill relatives at home instead of bringing them to isolation centers. Sirleaf said, “ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices, continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease.”

Health experts say the crisis underscores the need for earlier targeting of Ebola and other disease outbreaks.

“I think this should be a wake-up call to governments that they need to give health organizations the resources they need to be able to recognize and contain outbreaks as early as possible,” said Ronald B. Corley of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory. He said the WHO’s budget has been slashed, making it harder for the organization to come to the aid of rural areas in need.

Next week, WHO will convene a panel of medical ethicists to explore using experimental treatments now being developed. They include ZMapp, an experimental immune system booster reportedly used on two medical missionaries in Atlanta, even though the drug hasn’t been tested on humans. President Obama said yesterday the U.S. will not send ZMapp to West Africa because it’s unclear whether the drug is actually helpful, adding it’s “premature,” to fast-track approval for Ebola drugs until more is known about their effectiveness.

Dr. Stephen Calderwood, infectious diseases expert at Massachusetts General Hospital, said, “If there was Ebola occurring in the U.S. at major hospitals, the serum could be given to patients and their reactions could be monitored. That’s not the case in West Africa.”